July the 14th : The storming of the Bastille prison or the

Dr Georges Grouiller,
Nous remerçions pour son amiable traduction
Mme Catherine DARDENNE-REES
1er Adjoint
July the 14th : The storming of the Bastille
prison or the celebration of the ‘Federation’ ?
.
The 14th of July : A national holiday.
It was not until 1818, during the 3rd
Republic, after stormy and difficult
debates, that the Senate imposed
the 14th of July as a French secular
national celebration. This day, henceforth a public holiday, was to counterbalance the 15th of August , the
assumption of the Virgin Mary, traditionally celebrated by the monarchy
since the reign of Louis XIII.
However, which 14th of July was to
be celebrated and what exactly was
to be celebrated?
14th of July 1789. The storming of
the Bastille prison.
The Bastille Saint Antoine, an old
medieval fortress built to protect the
east side of the capital, symbolized
the imperious monarchy. It was shelter to eighty-two wounded veterans
and thirty-two soldiers under the
command of the “nervous” Marquis
de Launay. Even though Voltaire and
the Marquis de Sade had been previously held there, on that day, there
were only seven common prisoners.
This 14th of July occurred after a
month of political unrest. Thousands
of rioters, artisans and traders, fearing an intervention by royal forces
put in place on the outskirts of Paris,
went to retrieve thousands of guns
at “l’Hotel des Invalides”. They then
went to the Bastille to salvage supplies of gunpowder. The battle begins
with some one hundred attackers
being killed. It’s only thanks to the re-
grouping of two detachments of professional soldiers with two canons,
that they were able to overcome
this fortress. A massacre ensued:
le Marquis de Launay “after numerous outrages”, was decapitated by
a butcher, and his head paraded on
a pike through Paris. Chateaubriand,
“a witness”, speaks in his “Mémoires
d’outre-tombe”. That evening, the
building was destroyed by eight hundred workers in a euphoria, similar no
doubt, to the mood of the fall of the
Berlin Wall, “the last bastion of communism”, two hundred years later.
That Tuesday, returning emptyhanded from his usual hunting expedition, Louis XVI wrote the word “nothing” in his hunting journal. This was
obviously not meant to be a political
comment on the events in Paris, but
a simple record of the game hunted
in the forests of Versailles.
This 14th of July 1789 was a day of
great violence, symbolizing, if anything, the end of the old monarchy
and the beginning of the French revolution.
14th of July 1790 :
The grand parade.
To celebrate the first anniversary of
the storming of the Bastille, the members of parliament, representatives of
the people and the representatives of
Louis XVI organized a grand parade
of national reconciliation. This federation festival held in “Le Champ de
Mars”, where the Eiffel Tower is now
situated, was to solemnly mark the
beginning of a new France. A parade
of 260 000 people – Paris at that time
comprising of 600 000 inhabitants –
began the celebration with a mass,
including three hundred priests. Also
in attendance, were members of the
federation, representing all regions,
La Fayette representing the army and
Louis XVI accompanied by his son
Le Dauphin, who all swore oath to a
reconciliation and loyalty to the new
Constitution.
Despite the late afternoon rain, the
public were delighted with the day.
The 14th of July 1790, with it’s grand
parade, was therefore the symbol of
the reconciliation of the former regime
in France and that of the revolution
"the unity of the Nation".
Five years later, July the 14th 1795, it
was decided that the “Marseillaise”
would become the French national
anthem.
So, it could be said, that contrary to past belief, the 14th of July
could be seen more as an attempt
by the third Republic to commemorate the grand parade celebrating the federation and unity of the
nation, rather than the violent start
of the revolution in 1789.
This commemorative parade took
place every year in “Le Champ de
Mars” and then at the hippodrome
of “Longchamp”. This tradition is still
maintained, although since 1919 it
takes place on the Champs Elysées.
Bulletin municipal Été 2011